Well this is disappointing. My headphones have just decided to kack out – I now get the left channel out of both sides of the headphone. Not much use if I’m listening to anything recorded after 1965 or so. Looks like I’ll be making an unscheduled stop off in the electronics stores on Yonge St on my way home.

Speaking of my British guitar heroes, I posted a message on Bernard Butler’s message board asking if the release of a ‘Falling’ single meant that a domestic release of the McAlmont & Butler album Bring It Back was far behind? Well Bernard said it is, apologized for my having to pay import prices (I will actually head to ebay, but whatever) and told me to rip EMI a new one for only releasing the single domestically. Nimrods. But still, it’s nice to establish some sort of dialogue with one of my favorite guitarists of the last 10 years. He also asked if I knew the Hidden Cameras – I don’t personally, but the guys in my band do… Five Seventeen is roommates with one of the Cameras and did some mastering work on their indie releases. How cool is that?

np – Superdrag / Last Call For Vitriol

From the Canadian Press:

Sheesh.

Doing a mondo defrag – the defrag to end all defrags – on my box at home. It’s been so long since I did housekeeping on my drives that I’d forgotten you need to disable your screen saver before letting the thing run. ‘Drive contents changing’ my ass.

np – Death Cab For Cutie / You Can Play These Songs With Chords

Told you I’d finish it tonight.

Neil Gaiman has long been a favorite of mine, and while I do miss his work on Sandman, I have accepted he’s moved on from comics, though he does come back and dabble occasionally. And he still promises to finish Miracleman whenever the legal bullshit with king buttmunch Todd McFarlane is taken care of…

Anyway – Coraline is a Gaiman story for children, though I don’t know if I’d actually let a child – a small child, anyway – read this. Drawing inspiration from Lewis Carroll, it’s about a young girl, the title character, whose family has just moved into a new house with some typically Gaiman-esque eccentric neighbours. Bored and ignored, she eventually finds a doorway to an ersatz parallel house to her own, populated with sinister doppelgangers of everyone from her own house. I won’t get into any more detail on the plot, as it’s a quick read and any further synopsis would be pretty much the same as retelling.

It’s typical Gaiman – when you’ve been reading him long enough, you can easily pick out his devices and archetypes – but that also means it’s richly textured and cleverly told, with the little details like the Mouse Circus giving it that extra bit of charm. I don’t know how desensitized kids are these days, but to me, there are scenes that might be construed as frightening for smaller children… but that keeps in line with the fine tradition of fairy tales, and Gaiman is the master of the modern fairy tale. Overall, Coraline is slight, but enjoyable.

np – The Feelies / Crazy Rhythms

Swung by Mark’s not-so-new-anymore pad after work today. He’s been there three months now and I’d not ventured into the hinterlands of Yonge and Lawrence to check it out till now. It’s very nice. Chi-chi neighbourhood. Didn’t see a single porn shop, very unlike my section of Yonge. I borrowed a stack of DVDs – Amelie, Luc Besson’s best film Leon : The Professional, which I’ve only seen in its tamed-down North American version and Baise Moi, which apparently I need to see just to witness what is so offensive that even the French would ban it. And to offset this deluge of highbrow foreign film-ness, I took Jay And Silent Bob Strike Back… a good dose of Hollywood numbskullery to offset the rest.

I also borrowed Neil Gaiman’s new children’s book, Coraline. Of course, any children’s book by Neil Gaiman won’t just be for children. As a bonus, the illustrations are done by Dave McKean. For long-time Gaiman fans, it doesn’t get better than this. Or maybe it does, I’ll comment after I’m done reading it. Probably tonight…

Best part of the evening was watching Derek get interviewed by the guys from The Discovery Channel for a show they’re doing on music piracy. They were set up in the apartment filming Derek ripping supposedly copy-protected CDs, downloading off the internet, etc. This is his moment of glory, and could well land him in jail… The irony of it is, Derek doesn’t actually rip CDs because he doesn’t own any. He just downloads it all. But that’s semantics.

np – Interpol / Turn On The Bright Lights

Finished Paul Auster’s The Music Of Chance last night. Full impressions to come. This morning I started on Iain Banks’ Dead Air – quite a contrast, going from one author who favours a slow, introspective pace to one whose works move at a much more frenetic pace. Auster’s stories tend to exist out of time and place, as self-enclosed dramas unfolding independent of setting (though it’s usually in New York). Banks’ stories are very much the products of their time and place. For example, Dead Air kicks off in the afternoon of September 11, 2001…

Here’s a link to a Paul Auster interview at Salon.com.

My heretofore travel bug is starting to stir. It’s been a bloody long time since I’ve been anywhere interesting. The pics from NYC on Thrown Askew don’t help matters. I really hope that the lineup for next year’s All Tomorrow’s Parties doesn’t disappoint, my current plan is to head down to NJ/NYC next Spring for that.

In case I haven’t mentioned it recently, I really really hate working in Cold Fusion.

np – Velvet Crush / A Single Odessey